The advent of set-top box devices (“STBs”) and other media content access devices (“access devices”) has provided users with access to a large number and variety of media content choices. For example, a user may choose to experience a variety of broadcast television programs, pay-per-view services, video-on-demand programming, Internet services, and audio programming via a set-top box device.
Such access devices have also provided media content providers with an ability to present targeted advertising to specific users or groups of users. For example, designated advertisement channels may be used to deliver various targeted advertisements to an access device. An access device associated with a particular user may be directed by a head-end unit of a television service network to switch from being tuned to a content channel carrying a media content program to being tuned to one of the advertisement channels during an advertisement break in order to present advertisement content carried by the advertisement channel to the user. After the advertisement content has been presented, the access device may tune back to the content channel.
However, a mismatch in resolution between media content carried on a content channel and an advertisement channel to which an access device tunes may cause undesirable transition delays on some display devices (e.g., televisions) when the access device switches between the two channels. This limitation of display devices forces a content provider to maintain separate advertisement channels for each possible resolution (e.g., standard definition (“SD”) and high definition (“HD”)). Such is the case even when an SD channel and an HD channel (e.g., ESPN and ESPN HD) carry different resolutions of the same media content. This is because the transmission path of the HD content stream and the SD content stream can be different within a video network. In addition, the SD content may be derived from the HD content, thereby introducing lag time between the two content streams.